the world has teeth
by Jukebox Hound
Summary: The Outsider says, "I will give you a name, as I did for Daud. I do not play favorites, Corvo, but I'm interested to see which future you will choose when you realize how easily it could have all fallen apart, no matter how hard you tried or how many despots you ruined." Corvo's tempted to ask why he's doing this even though he already knows the answer. "Find Delilah."
1. Chapter 1

Inspired in part by NeverwinterThistle's _If After Every Tempest Come Such Calms_ and Smaragdina's _Eyes I Dare Not Meet In Dreams_. Mostly this is just an excuse to play with gods and their natures.

Warnings: implied past sexual assault of background characters, mentions of racism.

For Iambickilometer.

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 **the world has teeth  
 _jukeboxhound_**

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" _Your mother knew my face_ ," says the Outsider, and Corvo's breath momentarily catches. The Outsider watches him with a mild expression, hovering a few inches over the dilapidated, waterlogged shrine with his arms crossed. The water flooding the cellar reaches halfway up Corvo's knee-high boots and smells so putrid that Corvo would've been gagging if he hadn't been so used it by now.

 _Why?_ Corvo wants to demand. _What did you do?_ He stands silently, right hand on his sword and his left tightening around the ring of an oil lantern. The Outsider tilts his head to one side like a cat, but where the lantern's light should cast a dull shine on his eyes there's nothing, just oil slicks with two distant stars shining back.

" _No, she was not one of mine. She was not special, like you, but I showed her the possibilities that she would never live to see."_

"Which possibilities?" Corvo asks, though he doesn't really need to, suspicion dripping cold under his skin like the rusty water that had seeped between the stones of his prison cell, like the constant echo of the dripping, running, splashing water of the Flooded District outside. (It's the first time he's spoken in several hours.)

" _You already know._ "

Corvo looks away, staring unseeingly at the patterns of light thrown by the lantern over the water covering the floor. The light looks frosty and vaguely blue from the burning whale oil, washing out the pallor of the Outsider's skin into something like bleached bone. He feels colder than he did when he first descended the rotting stairs, not entirely sure what he was looking for except that Emily had forbidden him from doing his duties because _you need a break, Corvo, you aren't sleeping, just take an afternoon, okay?_

" _Your mother cried with horror when she saw the world in which the Wrenhaven ran red with the blood you spilled. She cried for_ _her son when she saw the world in which your heart howled for vengeance but you still stayed your hand."_

"Why would you do that?" Corvo whispers, but the Outsider doesn't reply. Corvo briefly considers hurling the whale oil lantern and watching it break open against the Outsider's chest, setting his clothes alight, burning the clinical curiosity off his fake human face.

Instead he turns his back and sloshes through the water towards the safe half-submerged on the far side of the room, braces the lantern on a high shelf that hasn't yet disintegrated, and reaches down to pull on the safe's front. The door swings open with an awful screech that briefly reverberates around the room and he finds a gold-plated figurine of a whale inside. Typical treasure of the nobility: pretty, skillfully crafted, but completely useless. Odd that it would be hidden in the cellar alongside a shrine, but when he glances up and sees the broken boards of the ceiling, he figures the sheer weight of the safe must have been too much for the rotted wood.

The Outsider is still watching him, unblinking, unmoving except for the Void-smoke that twists around his body and makes Corvo's head hurt if he looks at it for too long. Corvo stares him straight in the eye instead and waits for some sign that'll tell him why the Outsider would bother appearing when Corvo's doing nothing more interesting than scavenging for trinkets. When the Outsider still doesn't say anything, Corvo finally tucks the whale figurine in a deep jacket pocket, grabs the lantern, and makes for the stairs.

" _You are going to die, in the fashion of all men. Are you not curious to know when, and how, and why?_ "

Corvo lets out a startled breath – that would've been a threat from anyone else, anyone human – and his right hand automatically flies to one of the bone charms hidden under his waistcoat. He's suddenly so _tired_. "Everyone has to die sometime. I suppose I'll find out when it happens."

" _There is more than one type of death, my dear. Sometimes it is slow and begins before it ever touches your body. It creeps towards you when you lie in bed and stare at the ceiling; when the company of your loved ones is as lonely as standing in an empty room; when the things that once gave you pleasure become tedious._ "

"You speak of nothing that concerns me."

" _Don't I?"_

Corvo decides he's been away from his duties long enough and climbs back up to the empty plains of filthy seawater. He'll have to take a long bath and change his clothes to get rid of the stench of decay before he finds Emily.

…

It doesn't take long for the implication of the Outsider's words to hit him: the Outsider had been patiently waiting for Corvo to be born and to grow up and to choose any number of futures waiting for him, some more mundane than others, waiting while having the power all along to give Corvo what he needed to prevent himself from getting stripped raw and bloody. It wasn't until Corvo chose to be _interesting_ – or if he hadn't proven to be interesting at all –

When he realizes the scope of such dispassionate cruelty, Corvo Blinks to the highest point of Dunwall Tower and sits on a ledge overlooking the sheer drop of the cliffs, consciously holding himself very still so that he doesn't do something irreversibly stupid. Corvo's love for Jessamine had been a bright, blinding thing, unquestioned and absolute. Corvo can't decide if he loves or hates the Outsider, or even if those are two different things for him anymore.

…

A week after Emily was put on the throne and Corvo was pardoned of any and all alleged crimes (which was a political nightmare and, hell, it _still_ is, more than a few people suspect that the Masked Felon was the disgraced Lord Protector himself, even without actual proof, and surely the signature in the Boyle's guestbook had been a tasteless prank), Corvo orders a handful of guards to clean out the dungeons and dismantle the late torturer's shrine. It takes the promise of extra coin and their utter terror of him to convince them to touch the shrine, let alone rip it down, but Corvo doesn't trust himself to go down there yet.

For several days after that he finds himself tracking shadows and quiet voices, waiting for the water to stream sideways whenever he turns on a tap, but the Outsider never appears and that, at least, is a good thing. (So he tells himself.)

Corvo himself never builds a shrine. He doesn't need to when he already has a permanently-branded hand, a head full of blue Void-dreams, and the faint whisper of whalesong in his ears whenever it's a little too quiet.

…

His mother had been as devout as any of the women in the Oracular Order. She kept to herself, even among the other servants in a Karnaca lord's household, and taught Corvo the value of keeping his head down and his eyes and ears open. She recited the Scriptures each night before bed and again each morning when she woke up, and had Corvo do the same. When one of the maids was taken away by the Overseers, she stood by with an inscrutable expression on her face.

 _Mama_ , Corvo asked later that night when they were alone in their tiny closet of a bedroom, _why did they take her away?_

 _She's been accused of being a witch_ , she'd murmured, sitting beside Corvo's pallet on the floor and holding the little bone charm normally hidden under his rag pillow. He stood next to her awkwardly.

 _Why is that a bad thing?_

 _Because the Outsider isn't to be trusted_ , was all she said, looking at him like he was something she'd never seen before, something alien and fanged left on her doorstep. She did that sometimes but Corvo never knew why, just stayed still and quiet until she was his mother again. He doesn't know why until thirty years later when a god tells him in a flooded basement.

Corvo wouldn't have thought any more of it until the evening he walked into their tiny, bare bedroom, nine years old and exhausted from running between the kitchens and dining room during one of the lord's many fancy dinners, and found his mother with tears on her face and an assortment of bleached animal bones in her hands. The last time he'd seen her was when another lord, one of the honored guests, had pulled her aside and asked her to show him to a private sitting room; Corvo figured he wanted to get some respite from the stuffy, crowded confines of the party and needed someone to show him where to go.

 _Mama? Mama, what's wrong?_

 _Soon, nothing_ , she replied, voice oddly steady despite the tears as she guided a pocketknife over one of the bones. At a loss of what to do, Corvo finally turned away to get his nightclothes and nearly tripped over a bloodied rag lying crumpled on the floor. _Mama?_

 _It's all right, Corvo. Go to sleep._

And six days later, the aristocratic rumor mill was set on fire when that lord died in a freak accident at one of the brothels. Corvo caught his mother wearing a grim smile, but didn't ask, and it wasn't until he was a little older and walked in on a maid crying into the shoulder of another while a third ran a washcloth over the inside of her thighs that Corvo finally realized what goes on in the world of invisible women. _I have to keep this position_ , the maid sobbed, _I have to_.

After that realization, the next time he was on the training grounds, eleven years old and freshly apprenticed to the quartermaster, he ended up hacking one of the practice dummies to pieces and nearly got his hide taken off by the furious officers. _Why don't you ever get angry at the people who deserve it_ , he thought while the officer yelled at him, a small, hard ember of anger being fanned to life deep behind his heart.

His mother taught him how to be silent, how to watch, how not to be seen, and that sometimes, when all else fails, you have to take justice into your own hands.

….

It's at the latest lavish ball being thrown by the nobility at court that the Outsider's smooth voice flows through the space where Corvo is half-concealed by curtain and shadow.

" _Your empress is crowned and the plague reduced to a recent nightmare by the greatest minds of your time. Everything is returning to the way it was as though the last year never happened."_

Sudden adrenaline makes Corvo's heart pound. _I'm not dreaming, there's no shrine, why is_ he _here,_ but through the panic he still has the self-control to glance around the ballroom, track the location of every person and make sure no one's spotted his hiding place.

" _The nobility still scheme and trade coin as easily as their loyalty beneath tables of exotic wood while the bodies of the poor fill the streets. They talk about the latest prisoner from the depths of Coldridge Prison, scarred and starved and turned as vicious as a rat by his suffering, and take bets on how far his head will roll._ "

Emily stands as tall as she can in a room of adults, smiling and charismatic in her formal white dress as she makes the rounds from person to person. Curnow follows her closely. Corvo fixes his eyes on her and observes the hands of everyone around her, the shift of expressions, the particular fall of clothing that might betray hidden weapons. He forces himself to think of nothing but the fastest way to get to her side and the spray of blood that would stain the floor.

But it doesn't stop the hair rising on the back of his neck with the Outsider's closeness. The Outsider doesn't breathe, of course, but there's a sense of _presence_ : a stranger hovering over his shoulder, an open door at his back, the anticipation of something happening without quite knowing what. He forces himself to keep looking forward.

" _You are a blade that has grown dull with nothing on which to sharpen itself_ ," the Outsider whispers, and Corvo wonders when the Outsider became so – so chatty, and why. He'd always dropped pebbles of painful observations, but never ones quite so pointed as this; it makes Corvo's hands clammy with nervous sweat and his gradually slowing heart occasionally give a hard thump.

The Outsider's quiet laugh sounds like a wave breaking against rock. Perhaps he can hear Corvo's thoughts, and isn't that an unsettling possibility. _"What would it take to hone your edge once again?"_

Corvo's hand tightens around the hilt of his sword as he hisses, "If you so much as _look_ at Emily – "

" _You misunderstand. I have no intention of turning my attentions to your beloved empress, even as you slowly wither with the passing of days."_

His words pour down so casually. Corvo's knuckles turn white, teeth clenched so hard that he'll go to bed with his jaw aching.

The Outsider says, " _I will give you a name, as I did for Daud. I do not play favorites, Corvo, but I'm interested to see which future you will choose when you realize how easily it could have all fallen apart, no matter how hard you tried or how many despots you ruined._ "

Corvo's tempted to ask _why are you doing this_ even though he already knows the answer.

" _Find Delilah."_

…

The Lord Protector's quarters lay immediately to the left of the Empress' and they're connected by an intricately carved wooden door. At night, Corvo's personally-chosen guards make the rounds, but tonight (just like last night, and the night before that) he can't bring himself to sleep. He paces in circles instead, listens to Callista's muffled voice telling Emily some story or other before going to bed, takes comfort in the occasional little-girl snore or soft mumble that makes its way past the door. His quarters are far larger than his prison cell and it feels unnatural to have so much empty, echoing space.

It's a cold night and he's aching in the places where his skin was stripped off and his bones broken. The scar on his face pulls whenever he tries to smile. The back of his left hand burns a little like the touch of nettles, but though he might just be imagining it, he can't stop rubbing the brand with the fingers of his right hand until the sky begins to lighten and the castle wakes up for a new day.

…

"'Ello, Lord Attano," says a scullery maid, voice muffled by the enormous hearth she's leaning into and scrubbing. "How can I help you?"

Corvo stands close to the hearth so that he doesn't have to speak too loudly to be heard over the general noise of the kitchens. "Do you know a woman named 'Delilah'?"

"Delilah?" The maid sits back on her heels and thoughtfully rubs her nose with the back of a wrist, leaving a streak of soot across her cheek. "No, m'lord. Well, there's a fishwife down in the market off the Distillery District named Delilah Rose, but she's about as old as the cliffs and twice as ornery."

Probably not the right person. "Thank you, Priscilla."

The maid smiles, pleased that he bothered to remember her name. "You might try asking the housekeeper? She's been here for absolute ages."

Before he leaves the kitchens, one of the cooks insistently pushes a few apricot tartlets into his hands ("Still so thin, Lord Protector!") and a servant boy hauling a bucket of rotten vegetables asks him shyly about one day joining the City Watch. Corvo escapes with a few uncomfortable words and about half his dignity.

The housekeeper is in the laundry, eyes sharp in her wrinkled face as she barks at the servants scurrying around with pails of hot water and baskets of linens. The smell of lye and humans sweating in the heat is nostalgic, makes him think of the times he'd stolen a bedsheet and wrapped himself in it so he could sneak around pretending he was a ghost before his mother chased him out.

"Lord Protector," the housekeeper calls when she sees him skulking along the wall, "if you're looking for the empress, she isn't hiding here."

Corvo quirks a brief smile. "I'm looking for you."

"What's wrong?" she asks immediately. This close, he can hear the faint remains of a Tyvian accent.

"Nothing," he reassures her, "I simply had a question. Do you know a woman named 'Delilah'?"

He can see her flipping through the meticulous pages of her memory as she yells to a maid not to put more coals under that tub, good spirits, girl, are you trying to burn away the royal underclothes? Corvo waits patiently, noting the rhythm of the servants working, the entrances and exits and hidden corners, the thick glass bottles of caustic lye and the hot pokers moving coals around.

"There was a girl named Delilah some years ago," she says abruptly. "One of the kitchen apprentices. Baker, I think."

"What happened to her?"

"Had a talent with color, that one. Caught someone's eye when she started getting creative with the cake decorations. Allie! How many times have I told you, separate the colors from whites!" She adds in an undertone to Corvo, "Although, if you ask me, that peacock Lord Brandlestock could do with a bit of a mix-up."

He mimes turning a key to lock his lips and she huffs with fond exasperation. "If I remember correctly, she got snapped up by the nobles to be an artist of some kind. Might want to ask Sokolov, if you can find that _babnik_ outside of some poor woman's chambers."

"Thank you."

Sokolov is in the lab in which he and Piero found a cure for the plague. The carcass of a small animal is split down the middle and pinned open so wide that Corvo can't tell what it is. He carefully doesn't look.

"Delilah Copperspoon," says Sokolov with a contemptuous snort. His eyes keep straying to Corvo's left hand as though the Mark were shining electric through the glove. Corvo slides his hands into his coat pockets as casually as he can. "Significant raw talent paired with a deplorable taste in style. If I remember correctly, she abandoned my efforts to rehabilitate her lack of artistic knowledge in favor of a nobleman with a deep purse."

"Do you remember which noble?"

"Why should I? Nobility are a dime a dozen but believe themselves worth infinitely more."

Corvo mentally recites the mantras he'd used before Jessamine's death to remind himself that putting a fork through someone's eye isn't considered diplomatic.

(When he leaves to go speak with more of the Tower servants, he tells himself that he's feeling more awake and determined than he has in a long time because he finally got a few hours of sleep, not because he now has a reason to _hunt_.)

…

"My family deserves restitution," Lord Stratford concludes, standing tall and proud in front of his empress and a good portion of the aristocracy. Emily's feet barely touch the floor from where she sits on her throne.

Old money, Corvo recalls, with most of the family's value tied up in property. No longer as powerful as it once was, though the family retains some influence simply for the history of its name. The heir has quiet affiliations with some of the more questionable businesses in Dunwall.

"Why?" she asks bluntly.

Stratford rocks back on his heels a little, blinking. "What you mean, 'why'?"

"Why does your family deserve restitution?" she repeats, obviously remembers Corvo's briefing prior to this audience.

He sputters. "Our manor was unlawfully repossessed. There are _lower classes_ living in our rooms!"

"Do you have other manors?"

"Well, yes, but this was – "

"Did you get your stuff out before other people moved in?" she interrupts, a little more impatient than is strictly proper.

"Not all of it, but – "

"From what I understand," she says shortly, "you were buying up all the elixir you could, selling it for really high prices, and then turning around and lying about the money you were making. Is that true?"

"Your Majesty, that's a gross misrepresentation – "

"But not a lie?"

"Your Majesty – "

"Your manor was repossessed because you were lying about your debts and money," Emily continues, "so it wasn't unlawful at all. If your family has other places to live and got most of your stuff back, I think it's only fair that poor people who lost _their_ homes and have nowhere else to go should stay. It'd be terribly cruel to make them sleep on the streets."

Corvo listens to Emily and the nobleman's byplay while scanning the crowd from his place beside the throne, taking note of who looks carefully neutral and who look more openly alarmed at the empress' notion of taking care of _poor people_. He'd never stopped finding it bizarre how the amount of someone's wealth was inversely proportional to their sense of charity.

Corvo watches Stratford during the rest of the audiences until Emily tugs at his sleeve and declares that she's ready for dinner, and then he escorts her out, putting her in the capable hands of Callista and four handpicked guards. He leaves through his bedroom window, Blinking down the sheer side of the Tower and heading for the Estate District.

The manor in question has been converted into a sort of halfway house for plague survivors, many of whom had been on the edge of becoming weepers before Piero and Sokolov discovered a cure. It's the beginning of an experimental outreach program that's the brainchild of Callista and, surprisingly, Cecelia, who absolutely refused to take any credit when Emily overheard their discussion in the Hound Pits before everything went to hell and decided it was a great idea. Corvo remembers the still-living people crawling over corpses in the Flooded District, the Boyles' desperately lavish party papering over the dead on their doorstep, and he takes no small amount of satisfaction seeing the Stratford Manor's lavish bedrooms full of plain but clean cots.

It's pure luck that lets Corvo find a locked chest in the dusty, untouched attic that cracks under his lockpicks and yawns open over a stack of papers. There are lists not unlike the one Slackjaw had of customers, detailing liquid amounts of elixir and prices and methods of payment. There are other lists, too, and damning records, and Corvo's smile is filled with teeth.

Lord Stratford is currently living in a manor that's no less grandiose for being smaller than the previous one. There's a high number of estate guards later that night, but Corvo is less than a shadow and finds the lord himself getting ready for bed. The man shrieks when Corvo throws him up against a wall with his face pressed into the wallpaper and a hand wrapped tightly around his throat from behind.

"W-what – "

"You have a choice," Corvo murmurs without preamble, speaking low and forcing Stratford to keep his face in the wall to avoid recognition. "Either you give up attempting to recover assets that are lawfully no longer yours and, additionally, donate a substantial amount that will be determined later to charity, or I snap your neck."

"How do you expect to get away with this?" Stratford chokes out. "Who are you?"

Exasperated, Corvo gives the wall above them a look as flat as a coffin lid and tightens his grip. Stratford gurgles and reflexively clamps a hand around Corvo's wrist, trying to push him away, but it's a lamb fighting the bite of a wolf and Corvo patiently, silently, waits him out. After a few moments, Stratford stops struggling.

"You wouldn't," Stratford whispers hoarsely.

The next day, Emily is pleasantly surprised when one of the court's aristocrats hands over a bank slip with a number containing a fair amount of zeros. She accepts it graciously as her Lord Protector watches from the shadow of her throne and listens to a disembodied voice whispering into his ear, " _Such an interesting idea of honor in you_."

…

" _What will you do if you succeed in your search for understanding the power of a single name? Will you continue holding back your blade as you did before, or will the realization that you were so close to failing, despite everything you had done, finally break you and flood the streets with blood? Whichever way you choose…happy hunting. I'm sure it will be an interesting journey."_


	2. Chapter 2

Corvo wakes up drowning on land. Salty air clings thick in his throat as he stares up towards the ceiling and sees the bottom of the sea, fed by the rain falling upwards, the shadows of giant sea-beasts fading in and out of the depths. It's silent, not even echoing the sound of his attempted gasps, except for the alien croon of whales and the distant pounding of waves that might be the pounding of his heart. He stares up at the ocean and the blue glow all around him that goes on forever.

Corvo wakes up choking on air. Breath rattles out of him like the dry scrape of rat claws as he stares up towards the ceiling and sees plain grey stone, heart racing so hard it might break out of his ribcage.

It's still dark outside when Corvo slips out of bed and the cold floor stings his feet. Grit clings to the inside of his eyelids and he starts to tilt to one side if he stands still for too long, but stubbornness keeps him upright long enough to reach the window and brace himself against the glass. He's only wearing a pair of cotton pants, and goosebumps crawl up his arms and down his chest.

He can hear the whales singing through the closed window. After the unbearable weight of the silence in his dream, it's almost comforting, a reminder that being trapped in even the loneliest, darkest depths of the world doesn't mean being _alone_.

" _You are never truly alone, my dear_ ," says the Outsider. Corvo suppresses a reflexive twitch but doesn't turn around, keeps his eyes focused on his faint reflection on the window and the city lights outside. He notes that the Outsider doesn't have a reflection of his ( _its_ ) own.

"I'd have thought you would grow bored by now," Corvo says quietly.

" _You underestimate your own value."_

"To what? To whom? _You?_ I thought you didn't play favorites."

The touch, when it comes, feels like a chilled, wet wind against his skin, sliding down the curve of his spine over the dulled lines of scar tissue. Corvo whips around blindly, hand fisted for a lethal blow to the throat, but he just hits empty space.

" _In another world, you were the avenging angel that left a trail of corpses in your wake. Children are such impressionable creatures, and when she saw the last good thing in her world soaked in blood, little Emily followed in your footsteps. Even now, the empress that will direct the fate of a grand civilization in the years to come looks to you for guidance. Your every action contains the potential of an empire."_

"If that was all you were looking for, you would have given your Mark to Emily," Corvo bites out. "Or Sokolov." _I'm a shadow_ , he thinks, a little frantically, _I'm a sword to be wielded, nothing more_.

"I used to think you were a force of nature," Corvo goes on, "but you're not. A force of nature doesn't discriminate, it doesn't care if someone is _interesting_ or not. It just _is_. You're…not. Sometimes I think that you're more human than you know or want to admit. That maybe you're…" Corvo's tongue feels too thick for his mouth, his thoughts refusing to shape themselves into the limitation of language. He hates this, hates talking, hates trying to fit thoughts to words as though words alone could contain all the nameless _being_ in a man's heart. "You're like the reflection someone sees at night in a window, except you can't even do _that_."

The silence is so heavy that, for a moment, Corvo feels like he's trapped in his dream again and suffocating on air. Then the Outsider says softly, " _Rare is the man who can laugh in my face. Rarer still is the man who will question what I am._ "

"Rarest of all is the man who will listen," Corvo says, turning back to the window with finality, "but then, you're not a man, are you?"

The touch, when it comes again, is shocking in both its suddenness and unnaturalness. It's a coldness that flows through the raised hills of the whip-scars on his back, streaming along his ribs towards his chest, sinking deep into bones haunted by the memory of being broken, pouring into his veins until his lungs are filled with half-frozen seawater. It's a little like dying and a little like that first breath of air after nearly drowning, and Corvo doesn't realize his body is crumpling until his knees and hands hit the floor. He tries to turn his head towards the Outsider but his vision is bleeding blue Void and his ears ringing with the crashing of waves, he's suffocating on foreign oceans and forgotten eras and he can't – he can't –

Corvo finally comes back to himself lying spread-eagled on the floor, panting and alone, body only held together by wire and luck. The air is cool against bare, sweaty skin, and it takes several long minutes trying to remember how to be human before he notices the wetness making his loose pants stick to the inside of his thighs. He considers that for a while, vacillating between panicked sobs or trying to cut the Mark out of his flesh, and eventually settles on letting out a long, wordless sigh before gingerly getting to his feet to clean himself up.

…

The first assassination attempt comes during Emily's coronation. It's a nightmare for security, of course, she'd insisted on a parade through the streets so that everyone could see the pretty spectacle, not just the people important or rich enough to deserve being in the Tower. Corvo's only consolation is that he's now intimately familiar enough with the streets to know the best places for a sudden attack. Captain Curnow is a lifesaver and keeps Corvo from having either a nervous breakdown or killing every guard who makes even the slightest mistake, and Corvo debates whether the uproar would be worth promoting Curnow straight to the highest rank for an officer. He'll bring it up to Emily later.

Emily wears white trousers with a tastefully-frilled blouse and a jacket beautifully tailored in the latest fashion, and she sits at the front of the carriage, which is no longer covered in steel plates, so that she can smile and wave at her subjects. Officers in full uniform on white horses flank the carriage, and it's all heralded by a procession of men in ruler-straight lines of military discipline.

By all rights and tradition, Corvo should be seated beside her looking very professional and intimidating, but instead he Blinks from roof to roof, unseen, watching windows and doorways and the movement of the shifting crowds. The orange glow of Dark Vision melts across his eyes and flows through walls and blockades.

And then. In a dark, narrow alley where the crowd has its back turned are four guards taking on two men who seem to have Emily's death on their minds. Corvo sees the glint of a gun barrel in a two-storey window and corrects, _Three men_.

His bolt hits the sniper between the eyes, and before the body can finish toppling out of the window Corvo is suddenly standing behind one of the men in the alley, shooting a bolt point-blank into his back. The third man only has enough time to say, "What the f –," before Corvo's sword slices off his head, which falls on the ground with a meaty, hollow _thunk_ under a thick fountain of blood. He's left standing over two dead men, half his coat soaked scarlet and the guards staring at him in horror.

"How did you," one starts, before his voice tapers off into a heavy silence.

"I was already over there," Corvo replies, pointing to a conveniently nearby doorway draped in shadow. A couple of the guards look at each other uneasily, but Corvo's hard, steady stare finally has their captain muttering, "Aye, Lord Protector, sir."

The rest of the coronation is relatively uneventful, barring one of the lords getting drunk during the ball and sharing some things that will provide plenty of gossip until the next big scandal. Corvo is still keyed up, however, imagining Emily's little body lying as dead in his arms as her mother's, and he spends the rest of the evening prowling through and around the ballroom like a silent, dark-eyed predator, inspiring an undertone of uneasiness throughout the court. His blood is the pounding of a storm-ripped ocean against rocks, his skull ringing with whalesong, the corners of the room cracking until blue Void-light seeps through the edges of the world; he is the only one who _sees_ and _hears_.

 _Look at you_ , a voice whispers through the cracks, _how striking you are like this_.

…

" _I am the beginning of all things, and the end. I knew that the rise of your species would silence the oceans. I know that in five hundred years your beloved empire will be remembered only by the rubble being slowly worn away by the waves, and I know when the Void will open its arms and drown the world. But I don't know you, Corvo. You are the paradox that breaks a closed system. Your guilt punishes you by allowing your torturers to walk free, yet your love for Emily would have you bleed the city dry. Your mercy is cruelty because you know death can be a blessing. I know eternity, Corvo, but I don't know you, and that makes you infinitely more interesting."_

…

"Dereliction of duty," says the officer, and a shiver runs through the guards assembled in one of the smaller courtyards. Corvo stands with his feet apart, spine straight, one hand resting on the sword at his side as he looks out over the lines. The uniforms haven't changed since Jessamine's time and he knows, now, what those uniforms look like on bodies that have been stabbed, burned, disemboweled, or shredded by razor wire. Two men in particular have been singled out and stand alone in front of the other guards. Corvo steps forward and paces slowly in front of them, watching the way they stare straight ahead and very carefully don't look him in the eye.

"They were found with some of Slackjaw's bootleggers, Lord Protector," the officer continues stiffly. His voice has been tight ever since Corvo walked into his office, wearing an unreadable expression as he handed Corvo a discipline report.

Corvo automatically calculates: two guards, taller than average, one of them bulkier with muscle, and they move with purpose but poor balance; strong, but not very fast or agile; vulnerable at the spaces between their helmets and chestplates, at their joints and legs. Easy kills. Every so often a faint tremor rattles through their light armor.

"What did you expect to happen?" he asks softly, and sees them struggle, not wanting to be honest in case they seal their own fate but not wanting to be caught obviously lying. The silence stretches on painfully until Corvo adds even more quietly, "You left the southeast tower perimeter open."

The two guards glance at one another. Corvo lifts his sword and levels it at the guard on his right. "Draw your blade."

The guard doesn't move until the officer barks, "Do it!"

With a slight tremor in his hand, the guard steps forward, draws his blade, and raises it in a ready position. Corvo waits, unmoving, until the guard's nerve breaks and he slashes forward with a yell. It would be easy to draw it out, humiliate the guard in front of his squadmates or even maim him permanently, and it's nothing more than he deserves for leaving Emily wide open to a knife in the heart. In many ways Coldridge Prison was quite educational, and Corvo can think of so many _things_ to make the man regret every sin in his worthless, spirits-damned life. It would be easy to slip into the man's skin and send him smashing onto the rocks far below the Tower, summon rats to eat him alive, blast him into a wall and snap his neck, stop time and trap him in one endless moment of terror forever. So easy.

Corvo takes a step to the side, turns on his heel, recognizes and dismisses the opportunity to slice a throat or hamstring, and strikes hard in the back of the guard's head with the pommel to send him careening down to the ground in a senseless heap.

"I'm sorry," the second guard says desperately, "I'm sorry, it won't happen again, _Outsider's eyes_ , please – "

Corvo sheathes his sword and walks away, confident that, no, it won't happen again. The silence behind him is heavy, broken up only by the lone guard's panicked sniffling.

"The men are terrified of you," Curnow tells him later that night as they watch the servants set up dinner in one of the smaller halls. They're standing against the wall out of the way of busy people and delicately balanced platters of food, and Corvo keeps an eye on Emily as she sits at the head of the table and chats happily with whichever servant happens to pass by. Corvo grunts distractedly and ignores Curnow's amused smile. "They still talk about what it's like to see you sparring on the practice grounds, but now it's with a little more 'oh spirits I hope he doesn't kill me in my sleep.'"

Corvo rolls his eyes.

"They also talk about witchcraft," he goes on, serious, and his eyes flick down to Corvo's gloved hands. "Fortunately, the Abbey's still in too much disarray after the betrayal and death of two consecutive High Overseers to go witch-hunting, but you never know what they'll do."

"You know exactly what they'll do."

"Corvo!" cries Emily, bounding over with very un-empress-like energy. She takes his right hand fearlessly, entirely unmindful of his personal space because why should she be? "Callista's been going through the history of each isle and did you know that there were _huge_ naval battles with Morley with cannons and everything? I want to know about Serkonos. Is it true that the ladies are all scandalous and the men all tall, dark, and brooding?"

Curnow is badly muffling laughter into his sleeve. Corvo asks weakly, "Where on earth did you hear all that?"

"I found a book under Callista's pillow. It's about a dashing pirate from Karnaca who falls in love with a Grand Guard's wife – "

Corvo makes a pained noise. "No, Emily, it's not true."

Her face falls, then brightens again when she asks, "But there _are_ pirates, right? And I overheard some officers talking about how there are rumors that all the nobles hire assassins whenever they argue politics, what about that?"

"You should be careful with rumors," says Corvo. "Sometimes they're real and warn you when something bad is going to happen, but sometimes people use them to make innocent people they don't like look bad, too."

"Mother always did say that it wasn't fair how the nobles don't like that you look a little different and that you grew up with another language."

Curnow winces a little. Corvo, thinking of Gristol's perception of Serkonos as a den of whores and merchants, of the nobles' jaded palettes and their love of macabre novelty, says, "People only like differences that they think are actually safe."

"But you _are_ safe," Emily frowns in confusion just as a servant says, "Your Majesty, dinner is ready, at your will."

"Yay!"

Corvo lets himself be pulled along to the table and seated at her right hand. She's a warm, cheerful, moving weight at his side, like a puppy trying hard to be grown up, and even though there have been times this past year when she hides her face in his chest and quietly cries Corvo is so, _so_ thankful that she can still do this, can still laugh and be excited about new things and sneakily leave drawings of improving skill in his room.

"I want to try food from Serkonos. Can we make your favorite kind sometime soon?"

Corvo smiles until the corners of his eyes crinkle. There are no bared teeth. "If you wish."

It's a rare evening when there's nothing urgent demanding the attention of either Empress or Lord Protector, so they spend it together, coloring with pencils ("Corvo, is that a horse or a ship?" – "…It's a whale") and Corvo teaching Emily how to play Nancy ("Now I can challenge the guards! Will you show me how to smoke a cigar?" – " _No_ "). His sword and heavy coat lay on the desk while he sits cross-legged on her bedroom floor, letting Emily crawl around looking for lost pencils and getting the knees of her white pants all dirty and grey. He wonders if Jessamine would be proud of her daughter and decides that, yes, she would be, so much so.

 _Please_ , he begs, and doesn't think about who is listening, doesn't think about the whalesong just below the edge of his hearing, _please don't ever let this change_.

…

" _Everything changes, Corvo, except I."_

The Outsider's voice flows cold over Corvo's skin, following muscle and scars. It trickles over the steps of his spine, carved in sharp relief, and pools briefly in the curve of his back before running fingers down his thighs. Corvo shivers and turns his face up towards the endless blue of the Void and broken fragments of time. He doesn't think the Outsider's words are true, otherwise he'd never actually be _bored_ , but Corvo just smiles vaguely and closes his eyes.

Cool, dry hands sliding around the width of his ribs makes him suck in a sudden breath, surprised and unsettled and maybe a little bit terrified because _this has never happened before_ , but he doesn't fight it or open his eyes, and the hands stop with palms pressed on either side of his chest. Even though he's fully clothed and wearing his Protector's coat, he can still feel the touch against his bare skin, chill but getting colder until –

– the hands become so cold that they start to feel weirdly hot, like spilled alcohol, and then they _burn_ like a shattered tank spitting whale oil everywhere. The hands aren't touching bare skin but pressing beneath it, curling around his heart and holding it so, so carefully while it flutters and skips. Dimly he wonders if his heart is whispering his secrets to a god that already knows them, bleeding out all the little sins that have weighed it down like stones.

" _I would have you know me, my dear."_

He says faintly, "I think my sanity would – "

" _Corvo_ ," whispers the Outsider, and suddenly his whole body is burning while his lungs fill with seawater. For a moment his heart is crushed in possessive hands and then the world fractures into a kaleidoscope of the agony and ecstasy of a million, billion creatures. He sees Dunwall-as-It-Will-Be bleed into Dunwall-as-It-Once-Was and the Tower stands like a white beacon of crumbled black stone that never existed and an old woman carves a rune while the waves slowly bury her skeleton that's flushed with the excitement of new motherhood and the Void is breaking open and spilling out the world in its birth fluid as the world dies and washes up on the shores of the Void –

 _Corvo_ , the Outsider repeats, and Corvo slams back into himself, where time flows in one direction and past, present, and future are still separate tenses. The world is a step removed as his body straightens up, rolling its shoulders to settle itself like a coat on a new frame, and it moves towards the door, walks through the Tower corridors with none of the guards seeing the darkness wearing Corvo's flesh. They never meet his eyes, barely look at him, as he heads towards the highest, loneliest point of the Tower and looks out over the glorious ruin of the empire's capital. It's quiet in the late, late hours of night except for the screams of the dead and the haunting singing that echoes from the darkest parts of the ocean. Corvo can almost hear the words in the leviathans' crooning.

 _They sing songs older than your species, older than the land on which your kind walks. Only the Void is older_ , says the Outsider without sound or breath.

The world is caught somewhere between the faded colors of night and the Void-light that flays open its secrets. _What are you_ , Corvo wonders for the first time, _truly_ wonders and is terrified for it, and his own face cracks open with the facsimile of a smile.

 _I am the sum of all things. I have had as many names and as many lives as mankind could dream._

The Mark on Corvo's hand glows orange-blue and his body Blinks to the next tower, and the next, farther and faster than he's ever managed before – and it feels natural in the way breathing does, slipping through the spots in the world where the Void is just a little too close to the surface, the sudden stops and starts of time as familiar as going to sleep and waking up hours later with the sense that only minutes had passed.

He walks through the streets; sometimes rotten corpses blink at him with oil-slick eyes and the rats' chatter sounds like the clicking of dry bones. There's a group of men drinking whiskey, playing Nancy, down by the docks, and the Outsider says, _One of them carries the carved bone of a leviathan in his breast pocket and speaks my name when no one else is around_ , and when the man knocks back another shot, the alcohol burns so hot that it blisters his throat, chokes him, panics the other men. There's no malice in it, just curiosity and a sort of amused indulgence – _He wished to know me_.

And Corvo thinks, _You will be my end_.

The Outsider just smiles with too many teeth, and whalesong crashes in Corvo's ears like waves, like thunder, and salt stings his nose, and corpses whose shrouds have slipped off their faces smile back. Dunwall is a city sinking under its own weight and it heaves under Corvo's – the Outsider's – feet, and one day it will sink into the bones of the forgotten city on which it stands. One day it will wash up unrecognizable on the Void's shoals and the Outsider _(or Corvo, if he becomes death instead of just wearing its face)_ will swallow it back into the depths.

Corvo's head tilts back until the stars break through the docks' lights. They grow until they blind his eyes and he hears _that Ancient Music_ and his flesh becomes a sixteen-note scale _(not seventeen, not the last note that shatters the harmony, which only mankind could dream)_. Corvo's head tilts back until it breaks water and his mouth, his nose, his lungs fill with seawater and become home to the small creatures that crawl the black plains of the ocean floor. His ribs harden into the granite that holds up the Isles and his blood burns the hot blue-white of stars, of whale oil.

And, for the briefest moment, he _is_ the Outsider.


	3. Chapter 3

Corvo wakes up drowning on land with seawater streaming over his face and tangling his hair. His bedroom glows with a deep blue twilight and he doesn't notice he's scratching at himself until blood makes his fingers too slick. His skin is too small and itches in a way that he'll never be able to reach, and the loss is so consuming that he tries to scream but can't find the breath for it. He's lying on cold stone in his bedroom and missing half of himself.

" _Corvo,"_ the Outsider whispers, running fingers through the knots in his hair, and Corvo finally manages to gasp around water in his lungs, "You were human."

The fingers go still. Corvo is still trying to pick up his pieces. He is suddenly _alone_ and it's one of the worst sensations he's ever felt.

 _There is more than one type of my death, my dear_.

"What's wrong, Corvo?" Emily demands in that half-entitled, all-sincere way she has. Corvo blinks and realizes he's standing beside the throne, Emily twisted around to look up at him while the rest of the court waits. He's in human flesh and uniform, hair combed and lungs filled with air, and doesn't remember when that happened.

"Nothing, Your Majesty," he says, bowing, and she hums a little disbelievingly but thankfully lets it go and turns back to the court.

There are two overseers standing by the door. Of course there are. Corvo's eyes bleed amber and see the yellow of their bodies, the green of their purses. Ordinary, just human fear and authority looking out from behind inhuman masks, dreaming of a seventeen-note scale. He looks at Emily, who is trying so hard not to swing her legs and yawn, and sees a tiny white moth fluttering away its little life. It would be easy to snuff it out. He wants to cup his hands so carefully around it and watch it spread its wings a few more times, for as long as possible, before it inevitably dies.

"But, Empress," whines a noble from a thousand miles away. The curve of his skull under his hair is gentle and fragile and wouldn't stand up against a hard stone floor. Desperation writes lines along the angles of his body and they speak of old cruelties and future lies. Corvo breathes in air, holds it, and lets it go. It doesn't taste of salt and decaying things. He hears, "How long can we afford not to have a Spymaster?"

Emily replies firmly, "As long as it takes to make sure that the new one isn't going to have me murdered."

Silence. Corvo does not flinch. Eyes flicker in his direction and just as quickly flicker away, unable to hold his gaze. _Good_.

(But he's not entirely sure it isn't because his eyes might still be a little too dark.)

…

It only takes a day or two before Corvo remembers how to be human, stars and time and inevitability fading to soft mortal dreams as his body becomes _his_ again. Every few nights, when his paranoia lets up just enough that he can make himself trust in the abilities of his hand-picked guards for Emily, Corvo goes into the city and walks the streets. Surprisingly few people recognize him because who would expect the _l_ _ord protector_ to crawl through the muck and filth of the slums, so far from polished smiles and gleaming marble and the light of decadence through crystal-paned windows?

He slips through shadows that whisper in dry hisses. Rats stare but never bite. Corpses still smile. He finds a few runes and bone charms even though he's not actively searching for them, even with the Heart tucked away in Jessamine's secret room, because his Mark glows gently whenever they're nearby and there's a pull like a fishhook under his breastbone.

The treasurer comes to Emily and says that one of the Dunwall's largest whaling companies has been almost completely destroyed: the workers have been leaving en masse, Rothwild himself is missing, and the vital machinery of its largest processing warehouse is damaged beyond repair. The royal treasury, already nearly empty, has taken a hit from the sudden loss of tax revenue.

"How did it happen?" she asks, but all they know are rumors of a scar-faced man, Walls of Light deactivated seemingly for no reason, guards waking up in strange places with no memory of how they got there, pressure valves destroyed despite all the failsafes in place. So Corvo scours the whaling docks and asks, _Delilah_ , hears back _Knife of Dunwall_ and _Lizzy Stride_ , puts together the whispers and realizes that Rothwild's disappearance has nothing directly to do with the workers' strike after all. They say _, It was a shadow that passed through here, killed the whale they was butcherin', what a fuckin' waste_ , and, _Some of the stupid choffers say they can still hear the damn things singing at night._

(They are.)

(Corvo carefully doesn't think about he sometimes feels like one of the beasts they suspend from rope and kill so slowly.)

(The Outsider doesn't return.)

The Hound Pits looks a little more polished than the last time Corvo, facedown on its stained rough floorboards with the poison like broken glass scraping his veins raw, saw it. It's late afternoon and he finds a few patrons inside, three sitting in a booth and a fourth hunched over the bar, and also Cecelia, who's wiping out pint glasses with a distant stare. Corvo slips up to a corner of the bar on the opposite side of the fourth patron.

"Hello."

Cecelia twitches, yelps, and drops the glass, which Corvo catches before it can shatter on the floor. She takes it back with a stammered apology and adds, "What're you doing here? I mean, not that you're not welcome, you always are, if you want, but with Lady Emily – I mean, Empress – and being back in the Tower – "

"I'm looking for Samuel."

"Oh, um, he's been spending more time out on the river ever since the…the Loyalists. He still sleeps in his shack outside, though, usually comes back every night." She looks out one of the stained glass windows. "He might be outside right now with that tobacco of his."

"Thank you, Cecelia," Corvo says, trying on a sincere smile that seems to surprise her, and walks outside one of the back doors leading down to the shore. Samuel isn't there, so Corvo Blinks up the tower that used to be Emily's and sits on the ledge, legs dangling over empty space with the late-afternoon horizon sprawling before him. It doesn't look quite…real, more like one of the exquisitely detailed dioramas in a puppet show, as though the sky could crack like an eggshell and rain down bits and pieces of the Void.

"Corvo!"

Samuel's voice is raspy and grounding. He leans over, sees Samuel standing at the top of the stairs leading up from the dock and waving. A glance around the yard reassures him that there's no one around – no one sober, anyway – and Corvo casually Blinks down, mouth twisting when Samuel startles badly.

"Gotta admit, Corvo, I don't think that'll ever be any less strange," Samuel admits when he finds his words again, and Corvo thinks, _I'm glad_ , thinks, _It shouldn't_ , and then wonders, _What does it make me when it's become so easy?_

"How have you been?" Corvo asks softly as Samuel starts steering them towards the back wall of the pub.

"Been doin' a lot of thinking. You get to be my age and you think you've had plenty of time to get to know yourself, but then something happens and you realize that maybe you didn't know much at all."

There's an empty wooden bench pushed up against the pub's brick wall. Samuel sits down on one end but doesn't gesture at Corvo to do the same, leaving it entirely up to Corvo himself to decide what to do. He chooses to sit, shoulder-to-shoulder, the rich blue of his coat a bright contrast to Samuel's humble, rough browns.

"You did what you had to," Corvo murmurs as Samuel pulls out a battered pack of cigarettes and a lighter, takes out a stick, and lights up with the sudden tang of smoke in Corvo's nose. Samuel takes his time to pick his words, and finally says, "I did what I thought I had to to save my own skin, and it was the actions of a coward. I ain't proud of what I did."

"If you'd refused, they'd have killed both of us."

"Maybe so."

Silence finds a seat between them.

"Don't imagine you came all this way just to see an old man, Corvo. What can I do for you?"

Corvo says _Delilah_ and Samuel thinks for a long pause, the cigarette smoke curling long and lazy over the crags in his face, and then Samuel says, "Knew a ship named _Delilah_ up at one of the whaling factories, but no, can't say I recognize the name."

And Corvo, who had expected this, who knew the Outsider wouldn't have given him a puzzle too easily solved because then it wouldn't be _fun_ , says, "I can get to the Flooded District on my own, but your boat would be faster."

Samuel says, "Yeah," and stubs out the cigarette, and doesn't look back at the shadow silently following him towards the dock and onto the _Amaranth_.

…

Samuel says it's very quiet on the river today. Corvo glances over the edge of the boat at the rippling water and doesn't tell him he's wrong.

…

Jessamine's statue, still white but with crevices slowly going green with algae, towers over the district and its crumbling buildings. Corvo doesn't look for very long, telling himself he's more concerned with the narrow alleys and dark doorways, broken windows still lined with glass and the steady sound of dripping water that drowns out other, softer sounds. Samuel had been chattering cheerfully since they'd left the pub, but he trailed off when they passed the first of the dilapidated, decaying buildings. It smells like old standing water, mildew, and the rotting of the occasional weeper that had eventually dropped dead under a weak sun.

"Guess _he_ still comes around to see you," Samuel suddenly says as they come to a gradual stop in front of the old train station. The wooden boards under the waterline that were cracked just wide enough for a hagfish looking through human eyes to slip through are probably still there, unseen, gradually falling apart. "Not that it's any of my business, sir."

There's nothing sly in Samuel's voice, nothing slick as oil or twitchy as Sokolov's fingers when Sokolov's gaze falls on Corvo's gloved hands. Corvo nods once, jerkily, and Samuel hums to himself, murmurs, "You ever need me to do anything, you let me know and I'll see what I can do. You're a good man, Corvo."

The dripping of water echoing through the windows sounds like whispers in a half-familiar language and Corvo isn't sure that Samuel's right. ( _Whole fortunes were once traded here_ , they say, _and now all that's traded is silence. When Daud left, he told them not to follow and to find a better life for themselves._ ) As he stands up carefully in the stern, reflexively calculating distance and height and whether or not he remembered to bring some extra remedies, Corvo tells him, feeling inadequate, "Thank you, Samuel."

Words never quite fell into the right combination to shape what Corvo was thinking, but Samuel just smiles lopsidedly, the creases in his weatherworn face deepening like the grooves in the rocky cliffs that patiently bear the ocean's waves year after year, and maybe Corvo doesn't need to worry about finding the right words after all.

He leaves Samuel ("Go back to the pub, I'll be fine. _Go,_ Samuel") and flickers up the brick and scaffolding. _The path lies where it ended for one man,_ hisses a hagfish far below, _and where it began for another_.

There's only one person on the top floor of the old bank, standing where Daud had stood when Corvo took his breath and his dignity but not his life. It's a masculine figure, broader shoulders and narrower hips, shorter and slimmer than Corvo himself despite the bulky whaler's uniform. When the assassin realizes that Corvo is there – it takes several seconds, but still faster than Corvo had expected – he tenses but doesn't look up from what appears to be a journal lying open on Daud's desk. Corvo takes the opportunity to look around, pacing a wide circle from the window behind the desk to the open space in the middle of the library. The roll-top desk he'd ransacked before is still gaping and empty.

"I know you're not here to kill me," says the whaler. A young man, to judge by his slightly muffled voice, younger than Corvo thought he'd be, "so why are you here? Daud is long gone."

"What makes you think I'm not here to kill you?" Corvo asks. When the assassin straightens and reaches up, Corvo manages to check the reflex to reach for his sword as the assassin pulls off the whaler's mask. He's pale and smooth-faced, only the barest hint of stubble, with an old scar crossing an eyebrow.

"You don't have a reason to," the assassin replies, as though it's really that simple, and Corvo doesn't know what to do with someone willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. So he ignores it and lets his hand rest casually on the sword hilt.

"I'm looking for a woman named Delilah."

"Aah. Another witch."

"Where is she?"

"Knowing Daud, probably six feet under."

Oh. It'd been a possibility, of course, but having it confirmed is still…odd. (Anticlimactic. _Unsatisfying._ ) The assassin must see something on Corvo's face because he tilts his head thoughtfully and continues, "You don't actually know _why_ you're looking, do you?"

"Where did Daud find her?"

"The Outsider must have said something to send you here."

Corvo just waits, and the assassin finally sighs, ruffling a hand through his own hair with a soft huff in a weirdly normal way. "Daud wasn't the same after the empress died."

"What a coincidence," Corvo says tonelessly. "Neither was I."

The assassin winces. Corvo wonders how old this man actually is. "After he killed the empress, Daud…changed. Then the Outsider appeared and gave him a name, too."

"Delilah," Corvo mutters. The assassin nods, fiddling absently with a fountain pen on the desk while Corvo remains unmoving.

"Daud hates not knowing anything, it's one of the things that made him so good at what he does. What he did. Eventually he tracked her down to Brigmore Manor where she was hiding with the rest of her coven and the damn zombie dogs."

A large property abandoned, isolated, no City Watch to interfere or bystanders to spread the kind of rumors that would attract Overseers like flies to meat. If Daud and his assassins are any example, it was highly likely that Delilah had somehow shared her powers with this alleged coven of hers.

"He never said exactly what happened. He managed to get past most of her coven and then whatever happened, it…unsettled him, but it also seemed to…provide some measure of closure, somehow." The assassin is obviously picking his words carefully, and Corvo doesn't know why he's being so precise, doesn't know why the man is so willing to share so much detail so easily, especially when his face softens in some tiny way when he's obviously thinking of Daud. Loyal, then, probably to a fault, which makes it odder that the assassin remains in the Flooded District while Daud has disappeared – _unless Daud ordered him to stay. A distraction for me, even a year later and with no guarantee that I would ever have a reason to return here? Or out of some sense of consideration for this man himself?_

"Where's Delilah now?"

The assassin shrugs. "Dead. Or as good as."

"What does she have to do with Emily?"

The assassin's eyes narrow ever so slightly and Corvo's senses go sharp, the stillness of the library suddenly so loud and the assassin's movements suddenly so exaggerated. He's already memorized the entrances and exits and his back is already turned to a solid bookcase and magic begins to lick along the veins under his skin, and then the assassin…just looks rueful and so, so tired.

"I used to wonder what kind of person could experience what you have and then not only get the better of Daud but also spare his life. No wonder the Outsider thinks you're so interesting." Before Corvo can respond, he continues, "I know Delilah had something planned for Emily, but Daud never said what it was, only that he stopped it."

"…What?"

"Daud saved Emily's life, Lord Protector." The assassin gives another rueful half-smile. "If it makes you feel better, you can think of it as you saving Emily's life twice by sparing Daud's."

"Don't insult me. I don't take credit for other people."

The assassin unsubtly eyes the scar scrawled halfway down Corvo's face and says softly, "I can see that," and for the first time in a long time Corvo _misses_ the mask.

"Why are you being so forthcoming?"

"Daud's gone, Delilah's dead, and Lady Emily is on the throne. What do I have to lose?"

"No," Corvo says slowly. "You want me to forgive Daud."

The assassin shrugs, completely unashamed. "Will it work?"

Despite himself, Corvo is more amused than anything. He's vaguely reminded of Emily and isn't _that_ a bizarre thought to be having about one of Daud's men, however young, whatever the circumstances.

"We'll have to see."

…

Brigmore Manor is flooded and decrepit. Statues of the same woman are spaced evenly around the property – this must be the infamous Delilah – with the occasional dog skull randomly moldering in the shallow water. He Blinks his way towards the fallen perimeter walls, through the shattered gate, and over the shin-deep water to the front door. He doesn't hear anything beyond the grumbling of river krusts and distant dripping of water, doesn't see anything in the honey-gold of his Vision, but there's something about the place that's _off_ and making his skin crawl.

The door is unlocked. Water lit gold by sunlight spilling in through open windows splashes against his boots as he picks his way around waterlogged furniture, ducking beneath low-hanging vines and flowers. It's eerily silent; not even Coldridge had been so silent the day the guards took away three other prisoners in his cell block and they never returned, leaving Corvo alone with the dark and the rats, with the torturer and Burrows and Campbell. (And, oh, how Campbell had desperately wanted to sear the sin of _witchcraft_ into Corvo's flesh. Not just a traitor and a foreigner but a _witch_. Ladies and gentlemen, see the witch writhe under the agony of his sins, held down by steel manacles while bare, powerful, sweat-slicked muscle – _the Sixth Stricture has nothing to do with this, no_ – twist and flex under the cleansing heat of the brand. Such irony, now, with the dark lines carved into the back of Corvo's hand.)

Corvo bites the inside of his cheek hard and waits for the chill under his skin to pass before moving on. In deeper places the water has a green tinge and it's a struggle to keep his footsteps from echoing loudly around the sodden hallways, in the air that tastes damp and heavy on his tongue. The walls and broken ceiling seem to be pressing down on him, threatening to swallow him like the throat of some deep-sea beast. There are signs of a fight: a few misplaced bolts, some blood splatter, an empty elixir bottle. When he turns a corner on the ground floor hallway, he nearly trips over the bloated corpse of a woman in fashionable clothes draped artlessly over a pile of brick, green veins stark against bloodless skin. It reminds him of leaves that have partially rotted and left behind their delicate webbing. Corvo looks around, notes the unusual abundance of plants, and wonders if the dead woman's skin is marked with uneven lines like that because roots had filled in her veins.

He finds another corpse pointing the way, and Corvo climbs up a slope of shattered wood and brick, through the floor to a second-story room. It's not a room so much as a long hallway opening up into a balcony overlooking what looks to be a small ballroom, bounded by windows looming tall and empty over the echoing space. There's a large, plain canvas with a few whale oil lamps and a smaller lantern scattered haphazardly on the floor in front of it. Two more corpses are piled carelessly to the side.

Corvo crouches on the edge of the balcony for several long moments. There's only the distant, unending echo of water dripping in the manor's tomb-like silence.

He Blinks down and stands in front of the canvas. It must mean _something:_ it's the only room that hasn't been halfway destroyed, has several corpses inside and out suggesting that someone thought this room was worth defending with human lives, and there's too much a sense of purposefulness in the whole presentation. The question, he decides as he paces a slow circle around the easel, is what that 'something' is. There aren't any visible catches in the wooden frame, no indication that the canvas itself is hiding anything between its layers.

 _Delilah was another witch. Did she have a power allowing her to hide herself or things in plain sight? She once lived in the Tower, so she knows how Dunwall works from the inside. She would know people and how to get around them, and she would know where to push to find weakness._ Emily, the Outsider had implied something about Emily. _Delilah was apprenticed to Sokolov for a time, she would've been closer to the royal court than most_. Probably a ploy for the throne, then, that's always the reason for getting close to the royal court, but how?

The canvas seems to have pride of place in the center of the room, which maybe isn't an unusual thing for a painter, Corvo wouldn't actually know for sure, but he doesn't see anything else offhand that might be worth so much protection and death. Corvo picks up one of the small lanterns, finding a little oil left inside, and flicks on the catch. It sputters to life and casts weak, eerie light that spills blue-white over his hands, the overgrown floorboards, part of the canvas and its stand, and a corner of the blank canvas suddenly blooms a spot of vivid color like blood through gauze. Corvo holds the lantern closer, and where the light falls, color bleeds thick across the surface and cracks, breaking open a small piece of the world into the Void.

Without hesitating, he steps through.

…

Corvo stands on an island with thick grass shadowed by a gnarled, old oak. He recognizes it as the one under which he would listen to Jessamine read stories about pirates and brave princesses to Emily, those rare afternoons when all three of them could slip away from their duties and steal a few hours together. In front of the tree are a long, white marble altar and a second canvas, taller than even Corvo, dominating the space behind it. Unlike the other canvas, however, it isn't bare but a riot of colors, indigo and scarlet and gold, a pattern barely able to contain its own chaos. In the midst of it he sees a tall, severe woman, draped in the same vines and roses that had infiltrated every corner of Brigmore Manor with her aristocratic face twisted into a frozen scream of fury.

" _Here you are, Corvo, driven once more to find answers. Does it feel like taking a breath for the first time since you finally put the crown on little Emily's head?"_

He can sense that the Outsider is several feet away, close but still not within reach. "Daud stopped Delilah, and in doing so he saved Emily's life, didn't he." It isn't even a question anymore, and not just because of what the assassin had said.

" _Daud witnessed what his greed had cost the empire. He could not give back little Emily her mother or her innocence, and so he sought redemption the only way he knew how."_

"Hunting."

" _You and Daud share more than my Mark on your hand."_

Corvo doesn't respond, walks up to the canvas instead, raises his Marked hand and stops just short of touching the canvas with his fingertips. "I always thought that you and the Void were one and the same," he says abruptly, conversationally, and can't resist a curl of satisfaction at the noticeable silence behind him.

" _As I am now, I am the beginning and the end of all things."_

"But you weren't always. And I suppose there'll be a time in which you aren't again."

"… _I don't know."_

Hearing such a straightforward answer from the Outsider is unsettling _._ "You said you could see everything."

" _Not even I can know my own death, just as you cannot know yours until the moment it steals the life from your body."_

"What was she planning?" Corvo asks tiredly.

" _She made her brushes from the hair on Emily's head, collected from her rooms. She wove the canvas on the same looms which made the clothes that Emily wears. All she had left to do was become the young empress herself."_

Corvo's heart stutters. He imagines the afternoons of puppyish excitement, the nights of sobbing grief and _I want my mother_ , the moments in which her potential to be an extraordinary empress shine through that come increasingly more often – everything that makes her _Emily_ scraped out and thrown away to make an empty shell for Delilah to crawl in, a parasite that would smile on the outside while feeding off the rot on the inside. He tells himself that he would've noticed, that no one knows and loves Emily the way _he_ does.

" _Would you have known, Corvo? When you want so desperately to wake up from the nightmare? Would you have_ allowed _yourself to see?"_

He steps back from the canvas, letting his hand fall back to his side. "I don't know. But it doesn't matter. It never happened, so whatever possibilities you saw, they're no longer relevant."

" _Do you not see how futile it is? How, in the grand scheme of things, none of it matters?"_

"All I can do is try. It's what makes me human."

When he turns, he finds the Outsider sitting on the altar with his legs crossed at the knee and leaning back against a hand. It's the first time he's actually seen the Outsider physically interact with the world, even in the Void, and Corvo casually puts his hands in his coat pockets as he steps close enough that he could reach out and touch. The Outsider tilts his head up to hold Corvo's gaze, his eyes as dark and inscrutable as always.

"You'll always be a, a mystery," Corvo says quietly, trying to find the right words to define the _fear_ and _awe_ and _fascination_ and _hate_ and _love_ that holds his heart together with staples and wire. "But I think I'm…starting to understand. Just a little."

A smile curls slowly on the Outsider's thin mouth. _"You stand at a crossroads with the kind of potential that very few people will ever know. You will be the shadow behind a throne, no more and no less, until the end of your days. You will become twisted by bitterness and boredom until even the little girl you love so much is forced to declare you an enemy of the empire. You will be declared a hero of the people. You will die in agony with a traitor's blade in your ribs. You will die in despair by your own hand. You will die in peace under the weight of so many mortal years. Which will you choose?"_

"Like you said," replies Corvo, "I won't know until it happens."

" _And if you were given the opportunity to know?"_

Corvo gives the Outsider a small smile back. "I'd rather wait and see."

The Outsider leans forward, looking up from under dark lashes, reaching out to rest his fingertips on Corvo's jawline. _"I'm sure you will find it to be a good show, my dear."_

…

Back home in the Tower, all but the nightshift long gone to bed, Corvo pushes open the door between his room and Emily's and sits on the edge of her bed, careful not to wake her. She sleeps curled on her side, her doll on the nightstand, her hair a nightmare of knots from tossing and turning. A few spots of blue paint that Callista's scrubbing had missed stain her hands. Corvo watches her for a while, memorizing the way she occasionally scrunches up her nose or twitch her fingers like she's reaching for a paintbrush. One day she'll have to choose a new lord protector, and she'll be expected to marry, and long before then she will have learned how to be empress without Corvo constantly watching from over her shoulder. It's terrifying and part of Corvo wants to wrap her in her mother's velvet and hide her away from the world where she'll never grow up, never outgrow Corvo himself, but mostly he wants to see what kind of empress she'll be, the kind of revolution she'll bring about – because this is Emily, it'd be against her nature _not_ to revolutionize something – and most importantly he wants to see what kind of things she'll paint when she's learned to wear the crown like she was born to do.

…

" _So ends the interregnum, and now Emily Kaldwin the First will take her mother's throne after a season of turmoil. You will stand at her side, Corvo, guiding her young mind and protecting her from those who seek to exploit her or cause her harm. You watched and listened when other men would have shouted in rage. You held back instead of striking. So it is, with the passing of the plague and Emily's ascension, comes a golden age, brought about by your hand. And decades hence, when your hair turns white and you pass from this world, Empress Emily - Emily the Wise, at the height of her power - will lay your body down within her mother's great tomb, because you were more to her than Royal Protector. Farewell, Corvo."_

 _..._

Corvo stands in front of the gold gilt frame of a large canvas, tucked away on an island of green grass and white ruins in a blue void. Where a canvas should be, dripping in vivid paint and screams, Corvo just sees Emily – slim and strong, laugh lines around her eyes and steel in her shoulders – setting a ragged little doll on Corvo's headstone.

"'Farewell'?" murmurs Corvo, not looking away from the canvas.

" _Perhaps not so final a farewell as one might expect."_

Corvo takes a deep breath even though he doesn't need to. There's no pain in a tired body, no aching in old joints, no stiffness from years of scars pulling too tightly across muscle.

"It's been a long time."

" _Has it?"_

Corvo snorts and finally turns around. The Outsider hasn't changed at all, just as the Mark on his hand never did even after he stopped dreaming of infinite blue, but now, _now_ , Corvo can look at the pinpoints of stars in oil-slick eyes without drowning in the gaping chasm behind them.

"What is this?"

The Outsider's head tilts but, to his credit, he doesn't try to fake confusion. _"It is whatever you choose to make it."_

"You can't see it anymore, can you. My…possibilities."

" _Everything changes, Corvo, except I, and now you. Your fate has passed and your future is a blank slate. This is my final gift to you."_

Corvo looks back at the canvas without really seeing it. The moment stretches on and Corvo thinks about death's mask worn on a very mortal face, fate shaped by very human hands, altars standing as thresholds between the mundane and the divine. He wonders if he should be angry, if he should try to give back this double-edged sword of a gift he'd never asked for, if he should even be surprised.

"I wonder what they'll call me," he finally says, and the Outsider smiles. For the first time in decades Corvo hears the soft crooning of whales, and it sounds like they're welcoming him home.


End file.
